Perhaps when it comes to mixing HTML and server-side code, some form of soup is unavoidable, a necessary evil. The soup can be quite palatable; maybe even delicious. It's certainly possible to write good tag soup and bad tag soup.

But I have to wonder: is there a better way? Is there something beyond RHTML, Views, and Templates? What examples would you point to of web development stacks that avoided degenerating into yet more hazardous, difficult to maintain tag soup? Is there anything truly better on the horizon?

Or is this year's newer, fancier, even-more-delicious iteration of tag soup as good as it ever gets for web development?